Ben Warwick

I am a final year PhD student in the Astronomy and Astrophysics group at the University of Warwick. My supervisor is Joe Lyman.

Research

My current work is making use of the Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) models to investigate the progenitors of stripped envelope supernovae. This involves modelling the expected circumstellar material around the progenitors given various different assumptions. Then I calculated the expected luminosity produced from interaction between this circumstellar material and the ejecta from the supernova of the progenitor. By comparing these light curves to observed supernovae we can obtain a better understanding of the likely progenitors in each case.

This work came from my interest in obtaining and making use of observations shortly after a supernova
has exploded to probe its evolution at early times. A particular interest within this is what observations of the
interaction between the SN ejecta and circumstellar material can tell us about the end of life mass loss of the
progenitor.

My previous work was focused on automating the follow up of transients identified by the Gravitational wave Optical Transient Observatory (GOTO). I am planning on investigating how we can identify if a transient detected by GOTO is an interesting target worth following up. This will involve using smaller robotic telescopes to obtain colour and/or rise time information of the transient. With this information I want to see if the objects type can be identified. To this end I am investigating the application of deep learning to this process to see if it can identify ways to classify the objects from such information.

I have also led the follow up of the the type Ibn supernova discovered by GOTO, SN2023tsz. This supernova was of notable interest for its unusual location, that being in a remarkably low mass galaxy.

Teaching

I demonstrated the A3: Radio Astronomy lab at the University of Warwick to 2nd year undergraduate students. This involved taking them through making radio observations to measure the galactic rotation curve.

Publications

First Author

• Warwick B., et al. (2025): ‘SN 2023tsz: a helium-interaction-driven supernova in a very low-mass galaxy'

Contributing

• Makrygianni L., et al. (2025): ‘The Double Tidal Disruption Event AT 2022dbl Implies that at Least Some "Standard" Optical Tidal Disruption Events Are Partial Disruptions’
• Killestein T. L., et al. (2025): ‘GOTO065054+593624: An 8.5 mag amplitude dwarf nova identified in real time via Kilonova Seekers’
• Pursiainen M., at al. (2025): ‘ Optical evolution of AT 2024wpp: the high-velocity outflows in Cow-like transients are consistent with high spherical symmetry’
• Killestein T. L., et al. (2024): ‘Kilonova Seekers: the GOTO project for real-time citizen science in time-domain astrophysics’
• Scholz A., Warwick B., Van Aalten T. (2021): ‘The Fleming Survey: High-cadence Survey for Variable Stars in the Northern Galactic Plane’